Jerome Kilty has done it again. The Group 20 director seems to thrive on challenges and obstacles, for once more he has taken a thorny classic and turned it into a viable and engrossing theatrical experience. The Merchant of Venice is a good play; but Kilty has made it seem like a great play, and this is no mean feat. One forgets that the play is poorly constructed and rather liberally endowed with passages where Shakespeare definitely nodded.

Kilty is handsomely assisted by William Roberts' monumental two-story unit set, representing a corner of Venice, complete with tessellated pavement and an animal-head fountain spouting water. The wall beneath inverted-V stairways folds out to transplant us to Portia's greenery-bedecked residence at Belmont. Gilbert Helmsley, Jr. has designed some fine lighting.

This production inevitably invites comparison with the one last summer at Stratford. Though the general approach is different, it measures up favorably and is in some respects superior.

The play is mainly about love, but it is also about hate--which brings us to Shylock. There must be at least half as many ways to play Shylock as to play Hamlet, and most of them have been tried. Max Adrian gives us an unsympathetic Shylock--bitter, gloating, sadistic. Adrian is constitutionally incapable of doing a slipshod job; and this is a distinguished performance. Morris Carnovsky's unsurpassable portrayal last summer was an extraordinarily complex one; and it is no reflection on Adrian if he cannot match it. Adrian's Shylock is simpler and more straightforward, and wholly consistent. And he adopts a faster tempo than most actors, avoiding exaggeration and the temptation to make every word a crucial one.

Laurinda Barrett makes an admirable Portia, in both the latter's personae; and Olive Dunbar is a model Nerissa. Joyce Ebert's Jessica is attractive but vocally uneven.

The scene between Launcelot and Old Gobbo is, on the printed page, one of Shakespeare's weakest comic passages; and, on the stage, it usually proves to be an embarrassing interlude. For the first time in my experience, thanks to Frederic Warriner's Launcelot and Stanley Jay's Gobbo, the scene came out satisfactorily. Warriner, in an outlandish patch-work costume, turns the clown into a merry stutterer; and Jay sports an over-sized pointed nose and few teeth. Their combined antics are hilarious.

The casket-choosing scenes can be a bore, too. But Jay, doubling as the Prince of Arragon, emerges as a delightful fop. Robert Evans makes the Prince of Morocco a glum, dead-pan character, with unfortunate results. The only way to save him is to play him for comedy, as Earle Hyman did so tellingly last year.

Robert Blackburn brings plenty of verve to the role of the play's hero, Bassanio. Basil Langton fails to give much color to the flat title role of Antonio. Malocclusive sibilants unsuit Thomas Hill (the Duke of Venice) for classical speaking; he should stick to playing Willy Loman and other such parts, which are ideal for him. Of the smaller roles, Robert Jordan's Solanio is outstanding.

Kilty always likes to include crowds of colorful townspeople where appropriate. Here some two dozen persons appear from time to time--throwing dice, playing ring-toss, pitching apples, turning cartwheels, washing laundry and running about with flambeaux.

Despite some low-flying airplanes, the performers on the whole come through clearly; though one is frequently aware of their striving for clarity, which they must eventually overcome. Clarity should seem effortless.